SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – When Gary Contessa returned to training after a brief retirement, he took a private job based at Delaware Park, away from the spotlight.

In buying, breeding, and training horses for Nick and Delora Beaver’s Bell Gable Stable, Contessa is hopeful of finding horses that could get him back to the bigger races. Perhaps he has found one in Maryland Brando, a good-looking, debut-winning 2-year-old at Delaware Park who will run in Saturday’s Grade 3, $150,000 Sanford Stakes at Saratoga.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Trainer Chad Brown will have two shots at winning a sixth straight Diana Stakes.

Brown on Wednesday entered both Lemista and Pocket Square in Saturday’s $500,000 Diana, the first Grade 1 of the Saratoga meet. The Diana, run at 1 1/8 miles on turf for fillies and mares, drew a field of eight, including the Godolphin Racing duo of Althiqa and Summer Romance, the 1-2 finishers of the Grade 1 Just a Game at Belmont on June 5.

The 3-year-olds Rock Your World, winner of the Santa Anita Derby on April 3, and Flightline, the exciting winner of a maiden race at Santa Anita in late April, are scheduled to work at Del Mar this weekend for expected starts in coming weeks.

The two-week Los Alamitos summer meeting that ended July 5 showed growth in all-sources handle compared to a similar meeting in 2019.

Los Alamitos had an all-sources handle of $56.04 million, a figure that included bets on the seven-day race season as well as simulcasting in the days surrounding the meeting. The handle was 17 percent higher than the 2019 figure of $47.8 million.

In 2020, Los Alamitos held a summer meeting without customers because of the pandemic. The recent meeting did not have any restrictions.

Peter Miller won his fourth Del Mar summer meet training title last year with 28 wins in the 27-day season.

“I’ll sign up for that right now,” he said.

Miller is wasting no time showing his influence with runners in six of the 10 races on Friday’s opening card of the 31-day season, which runs through Sept. 6.

Mike Maker, well established among American trainers, truly goes nationwide this summer with his first division at the Del Mar summer meeting, which begins Friday and runs through Sept. 6.

Maker, who through Tuesday ranked sixth in the nation with $7.09 million in earnings this year, plans to have 20 to 25 runners at Del Mar, he said Wednesday. His presence gives the Del Mar meeting a much-needed boost of quality horses.

“We thought we’d give it a shot,” Maker said. “This year seemed like a good chance.”

Randy Morse has won graded stakes with top horses such as Jonesboro, Moonshine Mullin, and Morluc – so when he says good things about a 2-year-old named Texas Red Hot, it probably means something.

“He’s as good a horse as I’ve had in a while,” Morse told Ellis Park publicity after the colt closed resolutely to win a Sunday maiden-special at seven furlongs. “I hope he proves it.”

Dazzling stakes winner Big City Lights (by Mr. Big) set the bar high for the California juvenile division. Trained by Luis Mendez, who won the Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity last year with Dr. Schivel, Big City Lights’s 93 Beyer Speed Figure first out, and 85 in the Fasig-Tipton Futurity at Santa Anita, are the highest and third-highest figures by a U.S. juvenile this year.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Jockey Amadeo Perez, who Tuesday morning was in the emergency ward at Vancouver General Hospital, said by phone that he was “very sore, but I have no broken bones.”

Perez went down when the horse he was riding on Monday evening at Hastings, Day Pass, inexplicably stumbled and fell during the third race.

People in attendance assumed the injuries were severe. Before being rushed to the hospital, Perez was attended to by first responders for about 45 minutes.

“I am good,” Perez said. “I have no idea when I’ll be back riding, though.”

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Of all the tracks rendered silent in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic, Saratoga was where it was felt the most. Picnic tables, typically packed with people, were instead stacked a dozen or so high outside the grounds. The path from the winner’s circle to the jockeys’ room, usually lined with fans or youngsters seeking autographs, was barren. The sight of local favorite Tiz the Law drawing away to win the Travers Stakes by 5 1/2 lengths was not accompanied by what surely would have a raucous celebration.